# KDE Plasma 6.9 development introduces new weather widget and on-screen keyboard

> **Key takeaway:** The upcoming Plasma 6.9 release features a redesigned weather widget with Open-Meteo support and a heavily reworked on-screen keyboard.

**Published:** 2026-10-17T00:00:01+00:00 
**Source:** Planet KDE (Desktop Engineers) 
**Category:** distro-planet 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/kde-plasma-69-development-introduces-new-weather-widget-and-.html 

## Summary
While Plasma 6.8 has recently launched, development on Plasma 6.9 is progressing with significant feature updates. Key improvements include a new Weather Report widget layout, an expanded on-screen keyboard with modifier key support, and enhanced Night Light scheduling. Additionally, Qt 6.13.0 introduces font hinting for high scale factors.

## Key updates in Plasma 6.9 and Qt 6.13.0
- **Weather Report widget**: New layout providing hourly temperature and precipitation forecasts using **Open-Meteo**.
- **On-screen keyboard**: Now supports full-size layouts including arrow and modifier keys, a Japanese flick keyboard, and locale-independent layouts.
- **Night Light**: Added capability to temporarily enable or disable the feature outside of the standard schedule.
- **Qt 6.13.0**: Implements font hinting when the scale factor is set above 100%.
- **UI/UX**: System Tray icons can now be configured to a smaller size, and KRunner search fields have improved power-related item detection.

## Why it matters
These updates improve accessibility via the improved on-screen keyboard and enhance desktop usability through more granular control over system features like Night Light and weather data.